Talking to a Wall!

Talking to a Wall!


“Lets’ get back to work!” This was a quote in the San
Francisco Chronicle by San Francisco Police Chief,
Fong, describing the situation after weeks of the
scandalize police video that made racist, sexist and
homophobic jokes of the diverse Bay View district.
However what the police really wanted to say is, lets’
get back brutalizing people of color!

Well, San Francisco police are back to work! Just ask
Ace Washington, an African-decent man in his fifties
who is well-known in the Bayview/ Hunters Point
neighborhood, and has been a community activist for
decades. Ace was brutally beaten by SFPD Friday
night, 30th December 2005, outside Rassala's club, a
jazz club located at Divisadero and 7th Streets in San
Francisco. How ironic that in early December at the
San Francisco Police Commission Ace and I stood side
by side talking about his role on African American
Community Policing Board and comparing it to the Mayor
Newsom’s Blue Ribbon Committee that only sparked up
after the video. And now Ace, an advocate against
police brutality is now a victim of what he fought
against.

It is like talking to a wall! First it was the
Fajitas case that exposed the SFPD from the inside
then the killing of Cammerin Boyd, a double amputee
was killed by SFPD, now the video and three weeks
later the brutalize beaten of an African American
community activist who is well known in the San
Francisco community, progressive media, in City Hall
and with local police trying to mend the trust bond
between the Black community and the SFPD. Do you see
a pattern here? I do! First some internal stuff gets
exposed in SFPD then a black victim get brutalize by
SFPD! Hello!!!!

In the last Police Commission meeting, I attended Ace
was there like always filming the meeting for his
public access television talk show and I had my
recorder going also. One question came up about how
will police officers in the Bay View form some kind of
bond of trust with community and how can the community
respond to the video? As a community organizer Chief
Fong’s answer was a joke! She said something like “if
we are invited to a meeting we will come!” So I took
her statement to say, if somebody else do the work
than we’ll show up. What! You are the ones that made
the video and now you want the community to heal
itself and do your work!” If that is the case, than
just go all the way and implement community policing
by people in community like the Black Panthers did.
Now we have a beating of Mr. Ace Washington by SFPD.
I wonder what will be Chief Fong claver idea at the
first Commission meeting of 2006?

The Chief answer to the video has been to reinstate
the officers with full salary and on January the
fourth a free premiere of “Inside the SFPD – The
Bayview! What!? It is strange, if the SFPD thinks
this is a method of community trust building. It is
also strange that the community didn’t see the same
responds to the video taping when the camera is in an
activist’s hands i.e. Anthony Peebles during the 2002
Thurgood Marshall Academic High School police raid or
the video shot by Mitchell Crooks who video tapped the
beating of a Black disabled young adult, Donovan
Jackson in 2002. What happen to their videos? Is the
community called to a local theater to see those
videos? Oh smack, that is one of the projects Ace
Washington is working on! One plus one equals
contradictory results! Now in this new year the
public is supposed to follow these new laws cracking
down on what the media calls senseless acts such as
car racing etc but are these laws followed by police
who have chased many people that lead to police abuse.
Make you want to think the two standards!

Knock, knock is anybody home! This was my comment to
the San Francisco Police Commission. Helen Keller
could hear our requests of the Police Commission to
why the Cammerin Boyd’s hearing has been consistently
moved back since October. Now it is 2006 and still no
date for Cammerin’s hearing. For almost a year I and
others have been demanding that a person with a
disability especially with a mental health disability
be on the Commission. Well the chance has come and
went. Guest what? Still no person with a disability
or have knowledge of disability\mental health issue is
on the Commission. This comes on the heels of
swearing in of two new Commissioners by a committee
made up of some members of the Board of Supervisors
one of who has a physical
disability. So I ask myself, why am I and us are
talking to a wall. In other situations, we have
knocked the wall down like the wall of China, the
Soviet but as we knock walls down there are new walls
being built every day like Israel. So like the famous
poet June Jordan wrote “we have work to do.”

Leroy F. Moore Jr.
http://www.leroymoore.com




Leroy F. Moore Jr.
On The Outskirts: Race & Disability Consultant
sfdamo [at] yahoo.com, http://www.leroymoore.com http://www.nmdc.us http://www.poormagazine.org http://www.molotovmouths.com